The Face as Canvas: An Abstract Drag Workshop
Kala Art Institute and Gallery is excited to present The Embodied Press: Queer Abstraction & The Artist’s Book, on view from October 12, 2023 through February 9, 2024. This group exhibition, curated by Anthea Black, features artist’s books and publications by queer and transgender artists, from graphic novels and collage-works to bold experiments with letterpress, screenprinting, video, performance, and risograph. From the curator: “The Embodied Press make important visual and material choices in their use of printing techniques, sequencing, and manipulation or absence of text; they revel in visual abstraction as an antidote to the daily pressure of navigating our identities.”
In honor of this celebration of queer abstraction/self-abstraction and self-empowered narrative art, we are hosting The Face as Canvas: An Abstract Drag Workshop for LGBTQIA+ teens with the support of local drag artist Obsidienne Obsurd who embodies the abstract, exuberant, and wildly creative spirit of the Bay Area drag scene. After a Q&A session and an opportunity for the teens to converse with the performer, we will guide the teens through creating an abstract drag look (face) that incorporates the colors, movement and patterns from the works in the gallery. This 3-hour workshop is open to teens aged 14-19.
Curator Biography:
Anthea Black is a Canadian artist based in Toronto and the Bay Area. Black is curator of several exhibitions including SUPER STRING (2006), No Place: Queer Geographies, (2012-14), and PLEASURE CRAFT (2014) and co-editor of The New Politics of the Handmade: Craft, Art and Design (Bloomsbury, 2020) and HANDBOOK: Supporting Queer and Trans Students in Art and Design Education (OCAD University, 2018). Her studio practice addresses queer-feminist archives, collaboration, and artist-publishing, moving between representation and abstraction. Black has recently exhibited in Looking at the Invisible, Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, Loosely Assembled: The HIV Howler Intervention, SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, Montréal, HARDCORE EINDHOVEN, Van Abbe Museum, Netherlands, Beginning with the Seventies: GLUT, Belkin Art Gallery at UBC, Vancouver, and the Independent Curators International touring exhibition Publishing Against the Grain. She is Associate Professor of Printmedia and Graduate Fine Arts at California College of the Arts, San Francisco.
Event Details
Date: January 27, 2024
Kala Gallery
2990 San Pablo Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94702